Humphrey Curtis
King's College London, London, United Kingdom
Traditionally, Western philosophies have strongly favoured a dualist interpretation of consciousness - emphasising the importance of the `mind' over the `body'. However, we argue that adopted assistive technologies become embodied and extend intentionality within environments. In this paper, we restore an embodied view of the mind to theoretically enhance: understandings of assistive technology and human-human communication. Initially, we explore literature on: phenomenological theories of human experience, post-phenomenological accounts of technology, embodied accounts of assistive technology and participatory design. We then present a case study demonstrating the generative and disruptive effects of the embodied framework for co-designing AAC with people living with aphasia. Our findings show that the embodied framework supports a more multidimensional account of experience and suggests a shift from AAC devices that seek to `repair' users' speech. Reflecting on our case study, we then outline concerns with nascent technologies that could disembody and limit accessibility.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642274
The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (https://chi2024.acm.org/)